Unlock success: Treat your employees as human beings first.

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Paul to the Built By People podcast. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share

a little bit more about your career journey. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me. I appreciate it. My career journey for an HR leader is probably a little different than most. I started my corporate work in call centers or contact centers at American Express and kind of worked in customer service and credit and operations training or kind of learning their version of learning and development. And then continued to do that when I went to GE in their private label credit card business. Ultimately got to a company called CitySearch, which was an early stage IAC company in the, like, when it was still called USA Interactive before it got the official IAC moniker. And I was running customer service for them, having a good time. The company was growing as, you know, I'll date myself. This is 1998. So it was, you know, crazy, crazy, crazy internet times in Southern California. And our CHRO left to go back to the incubator that started, that helped start CitySearch. And I had referred a couple candidates that I knew that I thought would be great. 6 months go by, we don't have a CHRO. We're growing like most internet companies at that time., and our CEO, CFO, and co-founder one night came up to my desk and offered me the VP of HR job. And I, you know, I used an expletive when I said, you're blanking out of your mind. I don't know the first thing about HR. I don't think so. And you know, their sell over the next like 2 or 3 weeks was, your people respect you, you're a good leader, and you understand our company. We have an HR team in place that's early in career, but they all know their specialties. And so, I kind of, you know, my deal with them, which was now 23, 24, 25, actually 25 now that we're in '25, 25 years ago. So a quarter century ago, I'm like, I'll do it, but I give it 6 months. If I hate it, you have a job for me. If I love it, or if I'm terrible at it, you have a job for me. If I love it, no, no, no problem. And I loved it. I don't think I would, I don't think I would still want to be in contact centers or call centers today or for the last 25 years. And part of the— it was interesting to me. I went to lunch with that HR team and one of the, I think it was a payroll manager, Lisa, asked me, she goes, if I have a labor law question, well, where am I going to go? I usually go to my boss, but where am I going to go? And my response was, I don't want to try and memorize labor law because it changes like every minute of every day. And that's just in the US. And then you get globally and it's like, oh my gosh, I can't keep up with any of this. And I'm probably remembering it incorrectly. And so I said, I would just get a labor attorney. I said, or I said, Google is your friend. And she started laughing. She's like, it's a really good, it's a really good point. And I, you know, I've, so I've learned HR, the intricacies of HR by leading it. And, you know, luckily I spent 10 years at 4 different IAC companies, CitySearch, Ticketmaster, Match, and Cornerstone Brands. Different industries, you know, mostly tech. Cornerstone was a retail company that's now part of Qurate, which is QVC and HSN. And then I got to Orbitz, a travel company. And then I got to New York by working at an early-stage startup called AppNexus, which ultimately got sold to AT&T. And then went to Condé Nast, which was a big departure for me because I had mostly been in tech space. And it was interesting to me. I remember the CHRO, Joanne's, unfortunately she's passed away, but was a good friend of mine. She's like, Like she goes, you could do my job. Why do you want this job? And I said, well, I've never reported to somebody who actually knows what my job is or how to do my job. I've reported to a bunch of CEOs and not a dig on CEOs, but somebody who didn't grow up in HR has been leading HR now for like 10 or 15 years. And I said, I kind of want someone to validate that I'm actually decent at it. And they were looking at, you know, Condé Nast is a storied organization with amazing magazines. That was trying to sort out digital at the time. This is 2000, I guess 2012, and they're still trying to sort out digital at this point too. And they were trying to build out an engineering organization and things like that. And they're like, they're, you know, her response to me was like, you have the tech connections and you understand that. So I'm like, okay, let's do this. And luckily I was there for 2 years, great experience. I validated that I actually knew how to do my CHRO job, which was great. And I was able to help them a bit. And then the last 8 years of my corporate life I spent at Indeed, the job search company. Indeed was 9.5 years old when I got there, so a little old to hire their first CHRO, especially for an HR company. And there were about 1,000 employees and there were bits and pieces of HR there, but then I, you know, kind of built out the rest of that. And we grew in the 7.5, 8 years I was there from 1,000 people to 12,000 people. We started at $500 million in revenue and we were well into the double-digit billions in revenue when I left in the beginning of 2022. I look back and I, I still talk I've got a bunch of friends that I worked with there that were on the executive team. And we look back on it as kind of like the perfect storm. Indeed's products worked. When I got there, we had one product, job search, job postings, all of that. When I left, we had 9 products. In January of 2020, we launched a video interviewing platform, not knowing that the world was going to close in 2 and a half months. So it's kind of like all of these things happened in such a way that the business was booming. We were able to hire. And grow exponentially, keep our engagement high in the 80s, keep attrition below 20%, and keep a really strong culture even though we were growing like crazy. So it's like it was just the perfect, perfect storm. Like, you don't get— it's like kind of utopia for a period of time because you just don't typically see that happen. The pandemic took a lot out of me, like a bunch of other HR folks. And so I decided to leave, write a book, Human Beings First: Practices for Empathetic and Expressive Leadership, advise small stage, early, small, early stage companies. Um, when the board to PayScale. I've done a couple fractional gigs here and there, and so I'm kind of just trying to give back in a way to a bunch of different companies versus just working for one these days.

Paul, what inspired you to write this book, and how has your career journey influenced your perspective on empathetic leadership?

I've always led in the way I describe in the book, and maybe I just wasn't aware of it, but I think the, like, the crystallizing moment for me was probably like May or June of 2020. I was in my umpteenth Zoom meeting of the day sitting in this very spot, uh, because this is where I spent 3, 3 years of the pandemic while I was there. I was commenting on our CMO's piece of art in the background and I'm like, oh, like I really, I was like, you know, chatting him in, in the Zoom chat and like, hey, like who's the artist, blah, blah, blah. And so he's like, we're going back and forth sending me all these links. Clearly I should be paying attention to the meeting, but this was going on. And then the next day I was doing, the next day was a Friday.. And I was doing like a multi-skip level, uh, with a bunch of HR coordinators, um, on the team, just checking in, you know, my typical thing, like kind of checking in on them as humans as well, because we were going through a pandemic. And I was talking to somebody who was, uh, she warned me when we started, she goes, I'm at my parents' beach house this weekend. And she was staying at the kitchen island. She's like, so like, there may be noises and stuff, but like, I'm fully focused. I'm like, it's completely fine. Like, I said, you do you, that's great. I wish I was at the beach. I'm in New York and it's, you know, it was warm, but I'd rather be at the beach. And about 20 minutes into the 30-minute conversation, her grandfather walks in the background and is clearly talking to her, but she's got her AirPods in and she can't hear him or she's not paying attention to him. And I said to her, I forget what her name was. I said, hey, I said, there's an older gentleman behind you trying to get your attention. And she takes her AirPods, she goes, grandpa, I'm on with my boss's boss's boss. Like, and so I am like, let's talk to Grandpa. And so like, I introduced myself and we chatted for a few minutes and that weekend it kind of hit me that even though it was a CMO or an HR coordinator, before they're any of those titles that they're given, or we end up getting ourselves, like spouse or husband or father or friend, we're human beings first. And that's where the title of the book— my publisher for a hot minute argued with me about the title and I'm like, I'm not giving up the title. Like the title is the title. The title's been the title since that weekend or that period in May or June of 2020. My career in and of itself is human-first leadership. Here were 3 executives who were trying to make something out of nothing using Barry Diller's money, or a vast majority of Barry Diller's money, because he had invested in this company. And they came, and you could have hired any seasoned CHRO for that HR job at CitySearch, and they're like, this is somebody that's good that we want here that we think could be good in this job. Let's give him a shot. Like if I had stayed at American Express, that would've never happened. And nothing against Amex, I think they're a great company, but I would've, you know, if I wanted to be an HR leader, I would've gone back and like been an HR, you know, business partner or HR coordinator. And then let's start kind of my trajectory all over again. And so I think that like my career trajectory in and of itself is an example of human-first leadership where someone is willing to take a shot.

Paul, can you share practical examples of how leaders can reflect through all perspectives and see those less visible to create a more

inclusive workplace? Yeah, I think it's so important. And we talk about diversity. I talk about diversity of opinion, diversity of perspective all the time. You're going to get a better end result if you do that. I'll give you two quick examples that I use in the book, but reflecting through all perspectives. When June of 2017, before it was legally required or popular, we were going through a salary transparency project at Indeed where we were going to publish all of our salary ranges internally and externally. No laws in place yet, but we decided that, yeah, we're a job search company. We were talking to clients about posting ranges, like we need to drink our own champagne. And so we, you know, of course there's a, there's the beehive of HR people. My comp team was like, this is amazing. Like, let's go get this. So you built this project plan. I brief my peers, everybody's nodding their heads and all that stuff. And so we get deep in the project and I start hearing all this rumbling from different groups in the organization. And, you know, the biggest, the loudest group was engineering and engineering and HR have a storied history. Um, and so I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go into the, the wolves' den and like, let's have, so I go to their leadership meeting.. And I was like, why do I hear all this? Your, you know, CTO, head of engineering are not saying this stuff to me, but I'm hearing it through my business partners. And I'm like, well, this isn't going to work. That was the, I'm like, okay, that's not helpful to me. I believe it's the right thing to do. We talked to clients about it. We did the whole like, and, um, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. And so finally I started asking probing questions and very direct questions. And what we got to in this 20 or 30 minute conversation was they were scared shitless of the fact that we were going to go public with all this stuff because then all their direct reports would realize they haven't been completely honest with them for the last X period of time. And look, that's not a dig on engineers. I'm not picking on engineering leaders. It just was a, we were a tech company and engineers get treated differently at most tech companies. And it's not to say that that didn't, I didn't get that from other pockets of the organization. And so I started just talking to managers. And they're like, well, you know, I've been telling, you know, so-and-so that they're a rock star, but I've only been giving them like 2%. It's like, okay, so this is a good example of reflecting through all perspectives. Like, had not gone that deep. And again, we were at this point an organization of 5,000 or 6,000. It's hard to like go out to that many people to get feedback. But then I'm like, okay, like, so I just started doing leadership meetings. Like, let's go. And so, you know, some of them, sales was easy because their incentive, it's incentive compensation and it wasn't, you know, that they knew what it was all black and white. They finally kind of put the project on hold for, they took a deep breath. Let's all take a deep breath. Let's come back with a project plan that really is educating leaders on how to have the conversations. It's kind of paying back some bad debt that we had to do before we flipped the switch. And so we did that and the project took us like 6 or 8 months longer. But I think had we not done that and helped them, they had to work through their own crap too. And give them tools to deal with the employees that were gonna be coming to them, I don't know that they would've supported it. But, you know, so we, we were all, and everybody was holding their breath. Like, I, it was like, gee, we, it was probably at 12, no, it was like we delayed 6 months. We were supposed to launch in January of '18. We launched in June of '18. And I remember a peer of mine pinged me, like literally, 'cause we were going live at like 10:00 AM on a Tuesday. And a peer of mine pinged me. He's like, I hope we have a company tomorrow or something like that. And I'm like, all right, whatever. Like, we go live, it's crickets. I'm like, I'm checking with business partners. I'm like calling people. Some employees are pissed, but their managers are talking to them. Literally, we got through this unscathed, but I don't think we would have done as well had we not listened to these concerns that weren't coming out until like I just went in there and said, just tell me what the heck's going on. Um, I think that's one example. I think seeing those less visible, you know, we talk about making sure people are seen and heard and I think there's, you know, my simple example is I had an HR talent acquisition coordinator who was in our Stamford, Connecticut office, which is close to New York, like a 40-minute train ride. And so she was in New York every once in a while where I was based. And I knew her from one of the employee relations or employee resource groups that we had. One day she said to me, she's like, I'd love to like live through a day in your life. Like, I'd love to know what it's like to be a CHRO. And I'm like, why don't you just come shadow me for the day? Like, I'll make sure there's no confidential stuff going on and I'll just give people a heads up. And so we did that. She sat through a senior leadership team meeting, which was 2 hours on Tuesday morning, which is always an interesting period of time. And yeah, we had a good debrief at the end of the day. She asked a bunch of really good questions and kind of like I went on with my week. She went on her other week and I saw her boss in New York a couple of weeks later. And she said to me, she's like, whatever you did, like she is never going to leave this company. And I'm like, I don't do anything. Like she just saw how boring my job can be. And she's like, she is talking to everybody about the fact that you took the time to do this. And like, I'm like, it was nothing. Like, it was actually fun to have somebody along for the ride to hear some of the crazy, you know, ridiculous stuff that CHROs or any person in HR gets tasked with. But those are these two simple examples of, you know, we, we're all human at the end of the day. And our perspective is our perspective. It's our reality. But it doesn't mean that it's everybody else's, even though you and I are both white. If we said, oh, you know, I'll pick something contentious, which is not great, we won't get into it, but like, let's talk about, you know, next Monday and the inauguration. Your perspective and my perspective, even though we look the same, may be completely different. And so I think it's worthwhile to listen to, you know, other people and what they're thinking and how they're approaching something because I think at the end of the day, you come up with a better solution or a better program or a better product by doing it.

Paul, how can leaders balance vulnerability when they share more of themselves without compromising their authority? And why is it essential to listen to what must be heard in

today's workplace dynamics? Yeah, vulnerability is such a, it's such a scary thing because it exposes us, but it is such a powerful tool in relationships, in existing relationships and in new relationships. I look back to my time at GE. I worked at GE during the Jack Welch era, which is a long time ago. Go, and GE was a very different company then, but it was known for its leadership development and building leaders. And I got to go to Crotonville, their storied leadership development, you know, university, 4 times in a year. And I went to a leadership class and while I sat through it, I'm like, this is amazing.

This is great.

This is like, oh my God, you, you eat, eat this stuff up. And then now that I look back on it, like 30 years later, I'm like, basically they were teaching me how to be an imposter and how to hide things from my team. Well, that's just bullshit because like we're all human. Like I'm good at X, but I'm not good at Y. When I first hired, I was one of the first ones to hire a chief of staff at Indeed because I was not good at keeping track of everything that was going on. And I knew that. So I'm like, I just need someone to help me with this. And it was like a life-changing experience for me. And nobody like batted an eyelash or like, okay. And then other people started to do it because, you know, not that, you know, I was talking about why I liked it, but other people figured it out. A good example is the pandemic. You know, we happened to be all together the week we decided, my HR leadership team and I happened to be all together in New York the week we decided to close. And so we announced we're closing. It wasn't mandatory until the following Monday. And so we had one more day and I said, you guys can go home if you want to. I get it. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Like, what are we supposed to do? This could be two weeks. It could be two months. Like, that's where our mind was at the time., but I don't think there, you know, if I go back to my GE class, like admitting I don't know what to do was a wrong thing. I think you have to, and that's a simple example of vulnerability, but I think you've gotta show up as your true self. And some of that is being vulnerable to create deeper connections with your team. Like my HR leadership team stuck together through that entire thing. We were checking on each other, we were doing what we needed to do for employees, and it ran like a well-oiled machine. You know, except for the fact that none of us have ever done anything or had ever lived through anything like this before. I think that's why I'm a big proponent of vulnerability. I think, you know, listening to what must be heard. I think, I think younger generations are more vocal about what they expect. I think we all expect an organization to listen and listen to feedback. Not, I'm not saying that you have to agree with it or you have to implement it, but like listening to it is a big step. I found, again, during the pandemic, I was having to make decisions without data. I'd be on weekly all-hands calls and I'd get a lot of questions about where's the data? And I'm like, there is no data. So I made the decision because my job was to protect 12,000 people. We were 12,000 employees at the time. Like, that's what my job is right now. If you can find data, send it to me and I'm happy to look at it and change my opinion, whatever it may be. Like, our medical advisor doesn't have data. Like, this is just what's going on. And so I think it is, you know, You've gotta listen to the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's all, it's not all pretty, and it doesn't mean that you have to change everything all the time, but I think you, you've gotta look for patterns and themes, and if there becomes a pattern and a theme to some feedback you're getting, there's probably something going on.

I always believe where there's smoke, there's fire. Paul, how do leaders demonstrate care through action and use storytelling to connect through story in a way that strengthens team bonds and trust?

I think stories are so powerful. Like if you think about history, that's how we've learned history is through storytelling. And it's been around for eons. Like, a simple example I'll give you is I happened to be in our Toronto office for Pride, Gay Pride, in June of some year that I was at Indeed. I was there because I was on a panel at Google, like, on Thursday. Friday was our happy hour, and there was a Q&A, and then Sunday was Pride. And so I was working out of the Toronto office all week, and the, the senior sales leader there asked me early in the week, she's like, hey, at the happy hour, do you mind if we do a little bit of Q&A? I'm like, happy to. She's like, I'll send you some questions. Great. So sent me questions. I looked at them like, all good. So we're there, it's Friday afternoon. And one of the questions, and I knew she was going to, what she was going to ask me. So nothing was a surprise. She's like, can you tell your coming out story? And so I told it. We go on with the rest of the questions, wrap up happy hour. It's great. My husband had come up for the weekend. So we did a tour of Toronto during the day and the evening on Saturday. And then Sunday morning, it was typical kind of Toronto drizzly. Day and we were standing there and I was meeting people and chatting with employees I knew. And an employee that was at the happy hour came up to me and she's like, can I hug you? And I'm like, absolutely. And then I like, we got done and I'm like, why? She's like, I listened to your coming out story and kind of like your energy and the way you told it. And she's like, I've been grappling with how to tell my mom and my sisters I'm bi. And I met them for breakfast this morning and I told them and I'm like, okay, first How did it go? She's like, they're all good. My sister, one sister had figured it out. My mom had questions, but we're all good. And she's like, I don't know that I would've done it had I not hear you tell your story. This is a simple example of deeper connection. This is an employee that I knew, but a deeper connection through story and her finding something in my story to say, okay, I, I, I can do this. It's okay. I can tell my mom and sisters. That's not something you can. Teach. It's not something you can go through in a class or assign to somebody to do, or put in a template, but they know, like, somebody has to hear that and get something. She got power out of that story, that simple story. And so I think that is such an important way. Caring through action is just, you've got to know your employees. Again, they're all humans, they're all individuals. And so knowing them, and if something's going on, like, okay, you know, So-and-so, you know, just had a baby. So I know that she's got a husband and 3 other kids and cooking is not something she's gonna be up for. So let's send her a bunch of prepared meals. Or, you know, somebody just adopted a dog and you send them a little like puppy kit. Those are simple examples. Or somebody's parent passed away and you know them enough to know this is what I'm gonna do and this is how I'm gonna best support them because it's not one size fits all anymore. It's one size breaks all. And so I think you have to. Connect with people in a deeper way. I'm not suggesting the line between employee and employer goes away, but I think there are ways that you can connect and get to know people that you can be a better leader for them at the end of the day, and

it could be more customized. Paul, what are some strategies for leaders to protect their people while empowering employees to bring their full selves to work and

achieve personal and professional success? I think I, I see in the course of my 25-year career now in HR, so many times where leaders are scared to protect their team, an individual, a peer, whatever it may be, because of what it's gonna mean, what could happen to them. So I think you've gotta have a backbone. I think you've got to look at it. You're a leader of a team, but you're a leader in that company, and your job is to really think about the company and everybody involved in it, even though you may not know all of them, or they certainly don't all report to you. And stand up for what's right and stand up for people. I think that goes to making deeper connections. Like people, if you're standing up for them, they will run through brick walls for you. The, the simple, I'll give you a short, simple example. I took on a ragtag team, kind of the Bad News Bears, if, if people are old enough to remember that movie, in credit at American Express, my first leadership role. And the average team size was like 12 or 13, and my team was 26 people. And everybody said to me, oh, you've got the worst team. And they were in stats, they were at the bottom of the list. And I'm like, well, why do you say that? Oh, it's like this person has this issue. Like everybody had an issue. And so, all right, fine. Like I'm up for a challenge. And it wasn't until I just sat down and started to talk to them to figure out why some of the behaviors they were displaying were being displayed. Because of how people were treating them. And so then I started to stand up for them in meetings and for my peers at first were like, what the heck? And so we as a team started to bond. We went through a bunch of team development together. Then all of a sudden, you know, out of 12, we weren't in 12th place, we were in 9th place. And then like a month later we're in 6th place. And, you know, in collections, you know, there are, there's stats and, you know, it is competitive in the nature of the business and like Then we were like number 1 and we were number 1 for like 3 or 4 months. And people are like, what the hell is going on? And I'm like, yes, they're a little ragtag. Like we just got to know each other. I'm standing up for them. I'm getting them like this one, you know, so-and-so wanted this training, this, the per— somebody needed this, whatever the case may be. And like now they function as a high-performing team. Like they are getting their craft done, but it wasn't until somebody stood up for them and wasn't concerned about what that was gonna mean for me, that they all kind of gelled and started working like a well-oiled machine. So I think it's so important just to stick up for your team, even if it's a little uncomfortable for you, because that's what you're there for. I mean, my job as a leader, no matter what level, is really to block and tackle for my team. My team does the work. I'm just there to coach and cheerlead and get them what they need to

get the job done. Paul, any parting advice you'd like to

share with our audience? I think the biggest piece of advice, and I talk about this in the book, is that remember that you're a human too. Whether you're a leader or you're an employee, you're a human, you're an individual, you're unique. And sharing more of yourself and connecting with other people, whether it be your leader or peers, is going to create deeper relationships. And it's not that everybody has to be friends, but just knowing somebody a little bit better will help you navigate a, the difficult situation or helping them or whatever the case may be. So I think don't forget that you're a human.

Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast.

It was a pleasure to have you involved.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.